Beyond the X: Building Olympic hockey stars in Ann Arbor

In addition to daily practices, a busy game schedule and international trips that include the world championships, the NTDP players carry a regular workload of classes at Pioneer and must meet a minimum grade point average. Study tables are arranged to accommodate academics when the team is on the road. They even have their own academic adviser at Pioneer, a woman named Lisa Vollmers.

Players must carry a 2.25 minimum grade point average. If a player doesn't meet that, he's out of the program. That hasn't been a problem: The U-17 team averaged a 3.56 GPA in the fall; the U-18 team, a 3.48 average.

"You see guys studying or doing homework on the plane or the bus ride to hotels," said Joe Wegwerth, a forward on the U-18 team from Brewster (N.Y.) and a Notre Dame commit. "There's obviously a lot of dedication because at the end of the day everybody wants to get an education, too."

Of the 22 players on the U-18 team, only three have yet to make a college commitment.

Vollmers, who works for both USA Hockey and the Ann Arbor Public Schools, helps to pull everything together at Pioneer. She runs the academic side of the program. She meets with the student-athletes daily, arranges for testing and makes sure the athletes are meeting NCAA requirements so that they're eligible for college admission standards.

"She's outstanding and she takes so much off our table by keeping that all together," Cole said.

"Going to school with all the guys, it's a treat to say the least," Eichel said. "We have a really good time and Mrs. Vollmer takes care of us."

An athlete on a sports team at Pioneer may have situations where he or she has to leave school early on a particular day for a same-day road trip to another school for an athletic event. But that athlete will be back in class the next day. NTDP players sometimes leave town for several days, or longer in the case of North American road trips and international tournaments.

"Pioneer has been really good," Eichel said. "All of the teachers and staff have been really understanding of us missing school, letting us get our work in here (at the Ice Cube), not really putting a target on us at USA Hockey, but just letting us be like other kids in the school."

Just like those other kids in the school, the NTDP kids select their own classes and walk the same hallways as the other Pioneer students. A hockey player might have several teammates in one class or none at all.

"I think it's a really good experience for us because you have to deal with kind of everybody looking at you and have the aura around you," Wegwerth said. "But I think we do a great job of just being professional about it. Still trying to fit in, not acting like we're above everybody else. I think we've done a great job and I think Pioneer has done a great job accepting us and not making us feel out of place."

And how many schools in the country actually produce more Olympians than Pioneer High School? In 2012-13, 50 NTDP alumni were on 28 NHL rosters. In the 15 years that NTDP players have been eligible for the NHL Entry Draft, 228 have been selected.

There are still a number of players who have risen to the Olympics level directly through the NHL, college and junior hockey, but the NTDP numbers are increasingly growing.